A known roof apparatus for a vehicle is disclosed in JPH07-81426A (hereinafter, referred to as Patent reference 1). According to the known roof apparatus, when sliding a driving body in a rearward direction along a guide rail via a cable by an actuation of a driving mechanism from a state where a slide panel is fully closed, the slide panel pivots about a shaft together with a support bracket to slide in a downward direction. During the sliding down operation of the slide panel, a side surface of an elastic member comes to contact the support bracket in a vehicle width direction. Accordingly, the movement of the slide panel is restricted in the vehicle width direction.
According to the construction of Patent reference 1, because the elastic member for restricting the movement of the slide panel in the vehicle width direction is additionally required, the number of parts is increased. Further, because a material (i.e., rubber) whose hardness is changeable depending on the temperature is applied as the elastic member, a performance when restricting the movement of the slide panel in the vehicle width direction is varied.
A need thus exists for a roof apparatus for a vehicle which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.